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"This exciting news," said she, "drove it out of my head for the moment. Boys, I am very sorry to say I had a note to-day stating that Mr Richmond was taken ill while in France, and is dead. He was one of our few old friends, and it is a very sad blow." She was right. The Crudens never stood in greater need of a wise friend than they did now.
But several weeks before Mr Richmond's successors announced this windfall to their clients, the accident to Major Lambert's horse had resulted in comfort to the Crudens of another kind, which, if truth must be told, they expected quite as little and valued quite as much.
It is sad, of course, to lose any one's good esteem, but as things really did look up for the Crudens as Reginald really did recover, as Mrs Cruden and Horace really did not go to the workhouse, and as the Grand Roundabout Railway really was spirited enough to buy up the Wishwash and Longstop Railway at half-price, I cannot help saying so, whatever the consequences may be.
Hadn't we better go to London?" "I think so; and Parker here knows of a small furnished lodging in Dull Street, which she says is cheap. We might try there to begin with. Eh, Reg?" Reginald winced, and then replied, "Oh, certainly; the sooner we get down to our right level the better." That evening the three Crudens arrived in London.
So it was with the Crudens; and when at last the little trio stood on the Monday on the platform of Euston Station, all three felt that they would give anything to have the last few days back again. "I'll write, mother, as often as ever I can," said Reginald, trying to speak as if the words did not stick in his throat.
He was there to receive Mrs Cruden when she arrived, and after conducting the little party hurriedly through the three rooms destined for their accommodation, considerately retired. Until the moment when they were left to themselves in the shabby little Dull Street parlour, not one of the Crudens had understood the change which had come over their lot.
And Horace, really scarcely less miserable at heart than his brother, buried his nose in the Dull Street pillow and tried to go to sleep. It was in anything but exuberant spirits that the two Crudens presented themselves on the following morning at the workman's entrance of the Rocket Newspaper Company, Limited.
Such were the new next-door neighbours of the Crudens when at last they arrived, sadly, and with the new world before them, at Number 6, Dull Street.
Durfy always hated when Mr Shanklin alluded to his blunders, and he scowled all the more viciously now because he felt that, after all, he could do little against his two patrons which would not recoil with twofold violence on his own head. No, he had better confine his reprisals to the Crudens by Mr Shuckleford's assistance, and meanwhile make what he could out of these ungrateful sharpers.
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